My Back Yard

There’s an inch of water in the Squirrel Palace feeding tray. Good thing the squirrels and birds had emptied it of seeds before the corner collapsed off the frame.

Iggy, get out there and fix the frame! Your squirrellies need you!

I lugged my manual typewriter to Tokyo, Singapore, and across Australia.

I’d needed a typewriter for writing up my Ph.D. thesis research in Tokyo. On my way to Japan, I’d traveled with it as a carry-on. No problem.

But on my way home from Tokyo I planned to spend a few weeks traveling the Pacific. A typewriter would get in the way.

I wanted to ship my typewriter home. But the shipping companies told me it was too fragile to survive their care. I could have sold the typewriter to an expat. Such transactions were routine in the community of foreigners living temporarily in Japan. Indeed, the color television that I’d shlepped from apartment to apartment inside the Yamanote Line’s ring had a pedigree that went back to a senior professor of Japanese history. But my parents, who had given the typewriter, a hand-me-down from their office, were horrified by the idea of my abandoning it. Thus, my typewriter enjoyed multiple flights as well as the train trek from Perth to Sydney.

The age of the typewriter was ending as I wrapped up my thesis. Although I typed my first chapters, I produced the final version at a terminal tied to the university’s clunky mainframe computer.

Within a couple of years of graduating, my husband and I bought our first personal computer, accessorized by a daisy wheel printer. My typewriter soon receded into my closet. But we’d been through so much together that I couldn’t get rid of it.

Today I can’t deny that my typewriter is an anachronism. I was about to put it out on the curb for garbage pick-up. In fact, I had it at the front door for my husband to put out last weekend. He didn’t get around to it. And now I’m glad that he didn’t because I read in today’s Boston Globe about a man who sells and repairs typewriters. I’m hoping my machine will find a new home at that store. Even if it gets cannibalized for parts, that’s better than going into a landfill.

Iggy made his delicious lasagna recipe on Saturday.

Only problem is, he added spices by tablespoon instead of the teaspoon. The three tablespoons of red pepper nearly scorched my tongue.

Speaking of scorching, Iggy burned two sauces. The white sauce pan wasn’t too resistant to a good scrub, but progress on the marinara sauce pot has been slow.

Whole clams.

I couldn’t believe that whole clams adorned my white clam pizza at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. Yum yum. You can watch a Roadfood video about the pizzeria.

Some other highlights of our day trip to New Haven:
* Hearing a couple of (Yale Glee Club member) singers harmonizing under a university building’s dome with great acoustics so they sounded like an entire choir
* Exhibit of watercolors by David Cox, “Sun, Wind, and Rain,” at the Yale Center for British Art
* Sterling Library’s cathedral-like architecture, with an indoor gargoyle reading a book saying “U R A JOKE”
* Feeding some local squirrels
* Eating biscotti and other treats fromLibby’s Italian Pastry Shop, just down the street from Frank Pepe

I don’t enjoy picking up my messes. Probably most people don’t. But they force themselves.

Sometimes I set my 15-minute timer to encourage myself to make a small dent in my paper piles. Fifteen minutes isn’t very long, is it?

Yet I’m easily distracted into doing other things. For example, picking up a newspaper clipping encourages me to surf over to the website discussed therein. I don’t know how to stop myself.

“What rituals make you happier?”

Tal Ben-Shahar asks this question in Happier, his New York Times bestseller.

Some answers for me:
* Giving Iggy a smooch
* Bicycling with Iggy
* Feeding and watching my backyard squirrels and birds
* Looking at flowers or vegetables from my garden
* Writing my weekly gratitude diary entry
* Doing my quarterly goals review with my buddy
* Eating the first Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup

What else might work?

I used to get an incredible boost out of yoga when I took a class at work. But it’s hard to discipline myself to do it on my own.

What works for you?

A hawk looks majestic sitting on a branch of my maple tree.

But I can’t let it terrorize my squirrels and birds. So I throw corn cobs to scare it away.

My aim isn’t very good. I inadvertently discovered that I’m more likely to shoo the hawk by throwing the corn cob against the garage wall, which makes a loud noise, than by aiming at the hawk.

I got rid of the scary bird this way yesterday.

This comic gymnastics routine is cute.

Boxes can’t get up and walk away. Can they?

Yesterday I lugged two heavy boxes of Japanese books into the kitchen to weigh down the vinyl flooring. The pretty yet impractical blue-accented white vinyl flooring hasn’t been behaving. It’s lifting up around the edges. So I finally experimented with gluing down one corner.

It’s unusual for me to tackle a home improvement project. I’m more likely to plant flowers or vacuum the rugs. But I had high hopes. I read the instructions on the glue, cleaned the wood underlying the vinyl, and spread the sticky stuff with a brush. Then I checked the glue 30, 45 and 60 minutes afterwards to see if it had reached the right degree of tackiness.

Finally, the glue was ripe. So I grabbed some nearby weights–two boxes of books about Japan. Iggy has been boxing up my collection as a prelude to donating them to a university. If they could help the vinyl adhere, the books would have finally served a practical purpose. I felt good about making creative use of the materials at hand. Surely the flooring couldn’t throw off these heavy containers.

A couple hours later I was surprised to see flooring lifting up. Apparently the boxes had walked away.

Well, they didn’t really walk away. Iggy thought I moved the boxes to criticize him for not getting them out of the house. So he moved them off the flooring and out of the kitchen. I moved them back, but it may be too late to save my glue job.

But at least I have the satisfaction of having tried to make myself handy at home.

I’ve been dragging my feet about getting our second-floor bathroom painted. I picked the colors awhile ago with an interior design consultant.

But all of the additional decisions seemed daunting:
* Strip the wallpaper
* Choose and get a ventilation fan installed
* Pick a new light fixture with one socket that doesn’t work–and, anyway, we can’t find the cover for the fixture
* Find an electrician, painter, etc.

When I met an architect, I asked her for the name of someone who could do the electrical work. She gave me the name. When she saw me a month later, she asked if I’d call. No. It’s way too daunting.

But, lo and behold, the contractor called me today. Turns out he paints, in addition to doing electrical work. Also, he will make recommendations about the fan. We talked and he’s going to send me a rough estimate as prelude to deciding whether we’ll meet.

Something may happen to our bathroom. But don’t hold your breath.